Barry Zwicker:
At the last couple of conferences we've had in API, we've successfully conducted a debate on the topic of the particular session. This year is no exception. In order to have a debate, you have to have two knowledgeable and qualified people, and you need to have a moderator to keep the two who are going to initiate the debate in order. I'm going to turn over the podium to Roger Sturtevant from Annapolis County who is more than your capable moderator for a debate.
Roger Sturtevant:
The Committee that worked on this came up with a topic and it fits in with the theme "professionalism and education" and I think we have two very capable people to lead the debate. What we're hoping to do is somewhat polarize the views through the debate, make sure the debate polarizes the views, and at the end of the debate, we'll want to engage you in a discussion of the topic. We'll also ask the debaters to say what they really believe. What we'll do is not use a formal format, but we will keep time and allow each of the debaters to make their affirmative and negativepositions known to you in the way they have come prepared to do so. The statement for debate today is "be it resolved that planning students who graduate locally are fully prepared to take on the challenges of the practice in any planning work place". The debate format will not be a format that you've perhaps seen before - it's basically going to be equal time back and forth and not a formal debating procedure, but the negative will go first - Donna Davis-Lohnes, who will have a maximum of seven minutes to present the negative. The affirmative, Jill Grant, will then have seven minutes. Donna will then present another four minutes of the negative rejoinder to the comments and Jill will then have a maximum of four minutes, and then we'll have summations of three minutes each - the negative and the affirmative.
What I would also like to do is pick up on a comment that I got from Ian at the CIP conference in Newfoundland several years ago. We talked briefly about the need for monitoring and measuring. Monitoring and measuring in planning can be a very difficult but also a very useful tool, so I've enlisted the help of someone who is very good at measuring and monitoring, Mr. Phil Hore, from the Centre of Geographic Sciences in Lawrencetown, with whom I work and we do have an instrument that will be measuring this debate.
As we go through the debate, you may want to know where we stand and I borrowed this from an old American TV show in the 50's and 60's. They had something called a clapometer and one of my planning technicians helped me out and put this together.
Donna Davis-Lohnes will be representing the negative on the resolution. Her current position is General Manager of Planning Services with HRM. She has been employed with HRM since amalgamation in 1996. She has been in the Planning Services Department consisting of a staff of 32; 19 of which are trained planners. She's worked for the Town of Bedford prior to amalgamation for 8 years; initially as a planner and then as a Director of Planning and Development Control for 3 years. Her education is a bachelors with honors in geography from St. Mary's University; a masters of science in planning from the University of Toronto, with a specialization in housing policy and program development. Her areas of planning interest are housing policy, watershed management, heritage conservation, regional planning, and growth management.
Jill Grant will be representing the affirmative. Jill is a professor with the Department of Planning at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design. During her 20 years of teaching, she's assisted many students in their ambitions to find a career in planning. She has a PhD in regional planning from the University of Waterloo and focuses her recent research on residential neighbourhoods. Fresh from a sabbatical leave which saw her spend 4 months in Japan, she comes to the debate ready to take the affirmative position.
Donna Davis-Lohnes:
In terms of the resolution, my opinion is unequivocally no. I do not believe that planners who graduate locally are fully prepared to take on the challenges of the practice in any planning workplace. My position is derived from three perspectives. That of an employer - as Roger mentioned, HRM in our planning department employs 19 planners, 20 if you include myself. Myperspective also comes from an employer at the municipal level of government so a lot of my comments will be directed specifically to the municipal environment, and thirdly, my perspective comes from that as being a professional planner. I have my own personal and professional views on what I believe makes a highly employable planner and certainly a promotable one.
I will point out that there are planners in the Planning Services Department who have attended all four local academic institutions which offer either planning programs or planning related degrees. TUNS, or now DalTech, NSCAD and the School for Resource and Environmental Study as well as St. Mary's.
Why am I taking this position? In my opinion, planners trained in our local institutions lack some of the necessary technical knowledge, skills and practical skills - those communication skills we heard about a few minutes ago which are fundamental to fulfilling a planning position, particularly within a municipal environment. Why is this so? I think the expectations of employers have changed over time and I'm not sure that the academic institutions have either recognized this or are keeping pace with it. More and more employers are looking to hire planners who can come into a job and begin work without a lot of on the job training. Tight budgets, pressure to do more with less, and growing customer expectations mean that employers, municipal governments in particular, who I represent, are less inclined to want to spend a lot of time training planners to do the job. We need ready made, ready to practice planners. The implication for academic institutions is that it is no longer enough just to turn out individuals armed with theory and traditional technical skills and a good analytical mind. These things are still important, however, growing expectations of employers and greater competition in the job market, mean that these things alone are not enough to make todays' planners highly employable. Further, I think academic institutions are slow to recognize this fact and therefore to respond to it and I see students being left in large part to figure this out for themselves and take action accordingly. So what are the areas I feel planners require further training and preparation for entry into the job market? Essentially there are two areas I want to speak to this morning. I'll touch a bit on the technical skills and I'll talk in that context to complete my first seven minutes. Then I'll take my second four minutes to talk about the practical skills that I think are necessary and that I don't see being taught in school.
There are a couple of technical skills that I think are important which I hope spark some interest and debate. One is related to engineering design approaches and philosophies. It amazes me how many planners graduate from planning school knowing little or nothing about basic civil engineering design and philosophy. If there is one group in municipal government besides the public that we as planners work with on an intimate basis it's engineers. Yet do we learn the basics of civil engineering in school? Do we learn the fundamentals of how civil infrastructure is designed and works or how engineering design approaches can and do have a significant effect on land use community form and design? I've seen planners with 10+ years experience who still don't understand the basics of how a sewer system works or sees the necessity of really understanding how such systems work. It is these planners who are responsible, for example, for developing environmental policy aimed at protecting our freshwater resources. One would therefore presume that knowing about such things as sewer pumping stations by-passing into our freshwater bodies or the fact that stormwater run-off currently is not treated and is directed directly into our freshwaterstreams. One would expect that those kind of things would be important to those who actually write effective environmental policy. In my opinion because our civil engineering approaches greatly affect the design of our communities, understanding those relationships is a very important technical skill knowledge set that the planners should possess. The solution to this? I think it should be a requirement to take a basic civil engineering course in school, or secondly I think planning schools should think about developing a basic general civil engineering course for planners, or thirdly incorporate this technical knowledge into pre-existing planning courses such as the transportation planning courses that we have available to us or the water resource management courses.
The other area of technical knowledge I believe is lacking is in the realm of GIS and other technical analysis tools. GIS is a fundamental tool used in the planning field. Until very recently I think there's been little or no emphasis placed on teaching planners the basics of GIS - what it's used for, how it works, let alone actually having planners develop some of those fundamental GIS skills for themselves. Having a basic understanding of the technology not only permits the planner to communicate their needs to the technician who in larger organizations often is the technical guru who operates the tool but it also enables the planner to better understand the kinds of analysis possible and the kinds of uses possible for those tools - whether it be maps, modeling, spatial analysis, and knowing how to use those tools and what they can be used for is for communication. 3-D modeling for example is another valuable technical tool that I think planners should be aware of and exposed to. It can be used to show what a proposed development may look like and its impact on adjacent properties and streetscapes. It allows the public and the planner to explore design issues and as we know when we're out there trying to talk to the public and have them understand the implications of a particular project "a picture is worth a 1000 words" so such tools can be effective to communicate the ideas and foster discussion and feedback which is a fundamental part, in my opinion, of the job.
Effective communication is becoming a key challenge for planners, therefore the need to use a variety of techniques and approaches and tools in different circumstances is critically important. Many of these do involve using various forms of technology, so planners, I think, at the very least need to know these exist, have some sense of how to use them, and for what purpose. In small offices, government offices in particular, I think there's a requirement for planners to actually know how to use those tools since we don't often have the luxury of a large technical staff to help us.
Jill Grant:
I am very pleased to be able to argue the affirmative today since it's so clearly true that students who graduate from school are ready for the market-place and ready to take on any challenge in any part of this nation. My opponent has a very difficult argument to make because there are not very many facts in her favour but I will tell you the many facts that do support the fact that local graduates are ready to take on any challenge.
Local graduates can certainly appreciate the many benefits of this region of the world. They can appreciate the smell of the sea at low tide which graduates from other parts of the nation may not be able to do. They're not afraid to chew dulse with the locals or they don't look confused when theword "sum" is used as a superlative. They understand these things already. They've been here long enough to know the way the local culture works, the way that people in this region think about their communities, and therefore I would argue they are much better prepared. They understand regional landscapes, they understand regional customs and priorities, and they know something about the history and culture of this region that people from other parts of the nation are often not aware of. They have worked in communities in this region through their studio projects. Both of our local programs use a lot of community based projects so that the students have had a chance to develop communication skills, and develop other working techniques that do them a lot of benefit when they come out to work. They've also had summer employment, internships, in the community so they know something about local planning issues. Many of them, of course, grew up here and others who've moved to this region have come to love it and so they are very committed to it.
I think if we compare some of the merits of new recent graduates with senior staff in our planning departments, we'd find when we look at the ABCs of their relative merits, there's a lot to be said for hiring new graduates. They may not have all the experience of the old hands but they bring a lot of new attributes to the community and to the culture of the office that makes them very valuable employees that all of you need more of.
New graduates are young and fearless, they're eager to please, they're ready to learn. How many senior planners can you say are eager to please. Not so many any more. They've been at it for a long time. New graduates haven't had time to get jaded and frustrated by the experiences that we have to deal with in the workplace as practicing planners. They're sure not experienced but are long on enthusiasm. They don't know enough to say no when you offer them a difficult project. They have the latest knowledge and skills. They do know a lot about some of the things which my colleague just mentioned. They have a lot of technical knowledge; they've been taking courses; we offer courses today on site infrastructure; many of the students take those courses on site infrastructure, so they do know how sewers work - they do understand these basic principles. They're taking GIS courses and they're learning these latest techniques and they are ready to practice them in your office as soon as you're ready to give them the opportunity. Sometimes they come in and think they know more than you do - that's the nature of youth. One has to deal with that on a daily basis but they can bring in energy and spark to the office; they can generate new ideas; they can tell you about new approaches and the newest findings in the field; they can offer new successes in the workplace; and you can't underestimate them - they are a very valuable resource. We get some of the best students in the country coming to our planning programs here in the Maritimes. We graduate planners who are first rate at what they do. They don't know everything but they are versatile; they're adaptable; they're talented; and they can work anywhere with confidence. I think with the good training they get at some of the best planning programs in Canada, which I think our programs are here, we're graduating excellent planners. They have the enthusiasm of youth; strong knowledge about the issues and concerns of this region; and they are ready to meet the challenges of the workplace. I would argue they are second to none.
Donna Davis-Lohnes:
I don't know about any other planning directors out there, but I know I certainly haven't beenapproached lately by any dulse chewing planning students that have told me they have some good GIS skills they want to share with me but maybe there's some out there. I'm not sure that would be a key criteria for a job interview.
What I want to do is talk about the practical skills side of things versus the technical side. In my opinion, I believe that not only are planners lacking in the technical skills that I talked about and the technical knowledge, I'm not sure they have adequate training in terms of other specific practical skill areas and these are areas that I think are absolutely critical to the job of a planner. Again, my comments are pertaining primarily to the municipal government environment and particularly these skills related to communication and consultation. A lot of the points I make relate to some of the points we heard earlier.
I think a very significant part of a planner's job at the municipal level is consultation and maybe a better term is actually public dialogue. In the workplace, we are often recognized or it is anticipated or expected that we are somehow experts in this area. But where do we actually get our training for this? How much time is actually devoted in developing these skills in school? In my opinion, it appears little to none, yet these are vitally important skills on the job. There are very few types of planning jobs that do not involve public consultation and dialogue of some kind. Those of us who are out on the front lines talking to the resident associations are finding out these skills are critically important. Do we learn how to conduct public meetings when we're in school? Was anyone ever taught how to handle an angry and excited crowd of 100+ people and what to do or how to turn that excited and angry crowd into one which can provide clear direction regarding their concerns and how they want those addressed? The planner in this particular circumstance often performs a leadership role in actually conducting those meetings instead of simply being a participant in them as in the past.
What about presentation skills? In order to get ideas across, it's fundamentally important for planners to have strong presentation skills, both verbal and written. How do we learn how to do effective presentations and write good planning reports? Why aren't these taught in schools since they are so fundamental to the workplace? Public consultation or dialogue is becoming more and more challenging. The general population is more educated, more vocal, they have more time to participate. That's a positive thing, but as a consequence, planners need to acquire and develop a variety of interactive and interpersonal skills to help them carry out effective consultation programs. By interactive skills, I mean facilitation, sometimes mediation, sometimes conflict resolution, and certainly negotiation. Where do municipal planners acquire good negotiation skills? Development agreements as we know them at a municipal level are negotiated contracts governing land use and they are a very popular tool used at the municipal level and planners are the ones that are negotiating these on behalf of the municipal units. Understanding negotiating techniques and strategies is therefore very important, particularly since processing of these applications can also often occupy a large part of the planner's job function in a municipal unit.
Facilitation - planners facilitate - they exchange information to enable groups to work towards an understanding of the issues, problems, concerns, alternative solutions, and the implications of these. We heard earlier today that planners are no longer going out there telling people how it is or howit should be, but rather are going out and sharing information with them and trying to bridge the gap between the knowledge and action. People want action. People want to participate in that action and the role of the planner is to bring the two together. We need some strong communication skills in order to do that and I don't see us developing those or learning those in school. In some cases, facilitation is not the only tool that we need and sometimes mediation is necessary - where are we learning those mediation skills?
Project management - whether it's the development of a policy or the processing of a development agreement application, the work of planners I think can really be viewed as a project of one kind or another. I think project management and the managing of the processes we are involved in is a very important skill area that planners should be knowledgeable about. How do we actually establish terms of reference, develop work plans, develop timelines, identify process and means to bring together the resources to carry out the project? It's no longer good enough to write policies, process a case and stop there, we are involved in the implementation of it and involved in helping the public implement these initiatives. Monitoring of the progress and managing and evaluating the success of our initiatives - that's another key element that we are involved in. This is a skill area where I believe planning should be strong and is a skill area that should be taught in planning schools. Engineers are taught project management, why not planners.
In summary, all the skills I've just mentioned are of vital importance to practicing planners because they all relate to the strong communication role that we now have. These are basic skill areas, however, I don't believe planners are acquiring them in planning school but they should be. Fundamental skills such as these are not for on the job training.
Jill Grant:
Certainly the role of education is a very important one in terms of providing practical skills for graduates and I would argue that planning schools are doing a very good job of that. Graduate programs of course only have two years in which to try to teach planners everything they need to know and two years is not a very long time to do that. Undergraduate programs have longer. We have four years which gives a little bit more time to fill up the information needs of perspective planners but still there's an important role for the workplace in terms of continuing education for planners. We heard earlier today some discussions about this role of continuing education and planning is one of those disciplines where you can never stop learning. You can never know enough. There'll always be new skills that you need to have and so the workplace has a role - the employer has a role in providing continuing education so that people can develop the kinds of skills they need in a particular job they are in that become very specialized and which the planning schools can introduce. In the planning programs we introduce many kinds of skills and try to make sure that students have many opportunities to practice them but still there'll be a learning that has to go on in the workplace that can't be denied. You cannot expect a new graduate to have every skill they are going to need to do a job over the next 20 or 30 years. It wouldn't be reasonable to expect that.
The role of planning education is to get people to start to learn. If we get people into the workplace, who are ready to learn, are willing to learn, who know the kinds of things they have to learn, thenwe've done our job effectively. But also in the course of education today, we introduce many of the kinds of practical skills that are necessary. We give students many opportunities to try to develop communication skills. Presentations are a regular part of our programs, certainly at the Art College. I can't speak with as much knowledge about the program at DalTech but students do many presentations - they get lots of feedback on their presentations. They are developing their communication skills through the course of the years that they're with us and we can see over the course of time a considerable development in terms of communication skills. But that doesn't mean that every graduate will be an excellent orator. There is still room for programs like toastmasters or other things for people who want to improve their communications skills after they leave. We give students many opportunities to try and work on developing public participation, their knowledge about public participation, and their skills in that area of work. We send them off to observe public meetings, we introduce to them the kinds of skills in our studio projects, and we usually have students do public information processes so they are doing some kind of connections with the community. They start to learn about how this process works. It's still not the same of course as putting a practicing planner in front of a meeting of 200 angry residents who don't want the project that you're trying to present to them. There's nothing that can really prepare people for that first experience. It's one that you can talk to them about, and explain to them they may face this in their practice, but some things have to be lived through in order for you to learn the coping mechanisms that will help you the next time you face that kind of situation. We have a role to play in trying to introduce a lot of skills to students, but the ability of students to practice those skills, the ability of graduates to use them in the workplace, is going to vary from individual to individual. I think we've been making a number of efforts in recent years to expand and continually keep up with practice. Practice is changing in a dynamic way. The needs of what new planners have to have in the way of skills changes very rapidly, I'd say every five years or so, so we are finding new skills are necessary. As educational institutions, we can keep track of that in the region and we can respond. We are constantly revising or reviewing our programs so that we can keep up with these changes and be responsive to the needs of the region so that we are able to better address the needs of the local employers than are schools in other parts of the country that are much less aware of what's going on in this region and therefore their graduates may not have the same up-to-date skills that we can offer here.
To conclude this part of my presentation, I'd argue that the schools are doing a very good job of preparing students with the basic skill set, trying to upgrade that skill set on a regular basis, and eager to have response and input from local professionals about how we can continue to be responsive to the needs of the market place so that our graduates do continue to be the best employees for you to look at as you're hiring.
Donna Davis-Lohnes:
I have about seven points that I think summarize what I've essentially said in the last 11 minutes. First, my position is that I believe the obvious answer to this question that has been posed is no, planners trained locally are not fully prepared to meet the challenges of the workplace, in particular at the municipal workplace.
I believe, as I pointed out, there are both technical knowledge and more importantly practical skills the planners should be acquiring at school to better prepare them for entry into the job place and I've mentioned a number of them which are fundamental in my opinion to most planning jobs, and certainly at the municipal level.
I think the third point is a better balance is needed between theory, technical knowledge, and practical skills. My opponent indicated the basics are being met - I would argue they are not being met.
Originally, planning schools armed us with theory and some technical knowledge and the workplace was the place where the practical skills were developed. The result of this has been, in my opinion, a lack of standards and consistency in terms of what planners learn on the job relative to these practical skills. In many places the work place has not been a good teacher of these skills for that particular reason, leading to considerable variation in the competencies of those planners.
The growing expectation of employers today is that planners will get these skills I've mentioned or many of them when they arrive on the job. Employers have less resources and are less willing to teach these basic skills which are fundamental to planning. The role of the employer and I do have to concede this point to my opponent is to support continuous development and continuous training but a basic level of skill at the practical, technical, and theoretical level should come with planners when they leave school.
I believe the role of universities is to educate and train planners. I think there's responsibility there for them to understand employer's needs and to do a number of things. One is to provide advice to students relative to the courses they should take to meet these needs. Secondly, this in part could be achieved in the local context if students were encouraged and if it was made easy for them to take courses from the various institutions offering planning and planning related courses. I was just exposed to a course that's offered by the School of Resource in Environmental Studies the other day - a public involvement class. I didn't even know it existed - a great class. The only one that I'm aware of that takes that amount of time and puts that amount of effort into having the students understand the challenges of dealing with public interest groups - that's part of our business. So the courses are out there but the students have to go looking for them and it's not often easy when you're in one particular program to basically be able to take those courses.
We saw a diagram earlier today where basically different models are being looked at in terms of the educational institutions and I would suggest this is worthy of discussion in the local context of breaking down those barriers. Open it up and develop a program where planners and planning students can pick and choose from the various institutions to give them this well rounded set of skills. I still think though that for some of these practical skills I'm talking about we don't even have the courses that can provide that basic information.
In this era of customer service, I would suggest that businesses and services who listen to their customers and respond to their needs stay in business - they grow and they flourish. These suggestions that I've offered today will not only result in better trained planners coming from ourlocal institutions and make them more immediately employable but also gives these institutions a competitive edge over others and attract more students. I was recently at a presentation where a gentleman was talking about the MBA program at Queens. They were losing school enrollment and the price of tuition was going up, so what they finally decided to do was to actually talk to the people who were hiring MBA students, found out what the employers needs were, changed their program, and now the program at Queens is the highest in demand. The stats are also proving that the graduates from Queens basically are not only employable but they're employable initially at very high salary ranges. What they did was change the curriculum to reflect the input and their mission was to turn out well round employable students. I think that needs to be our mission here locally.
One final comment is with respect to the survey that Dr. Wight had shown and indicated there was a bias relative to public sector managers. Well, I happen to agree with him on that and I looked at the top 10 items that are basically ranked there in terms of their importance relative to skills that managers such as myself look for in new hires. They are in the areas of writing, communication, management, with less of an emphasis on analysis. If you look at the job descriptions that we use
in HRM, those are all key criterion. Communication skills, the interpersonal skills, - that's what we're looking for.
Jill Grant:
I want to conclude my discussion today by making the argument again that our Maritime graduates are well prepared - they are the "cream of the crop". They have the skills they need to go into almost any kind of work environment and succeed and they've done so. They've gone into a very wide variety of jobs in many different sectors in this region and have succeeded very well - some of them rising to top positions.
Maritime graduates won't embarrass you if you employ them by calling Mr. Boutilier - Monsieur Boutilier which someone from away might be tempted to do because they don't understand the customs of the region. They want to stay in the Atlantic Provinces and sometimes that means they are willing to accept the meager salaries that you can offer when people from away don't want to come.
People may argue that our schools in the Maritime region are too small to be able to keep up with the schools in other regions. I think that we can argue that small is beautiful - that the small programs are able to give students much more individual attention, individual support. There's a greater connection between our programs in the local professional community that is true in much of the country. There's animosity between the profession and the schools in some parts of this country which just does not occur in this region. There's a very strong link. The schools are very responsive to the local professional community and concerned to make sure that our programs do address the needs of the market place as well as educational needs of the students that we are instructing.
Our programs have a studio focus which makes them community based - much more responsive andable to develop the kinds of skills that you need. The communication skills, the ability to work with community members and community groups, that is simply not there in many of the planning programs around the country. Certainly the schools are focused on trying to enhance these skills that we've been talking about. Communication skills have always been a central feature of our education environment. It's one that we work on constantly. The new technical skills that people need are also a major focus. We are trying to make sure that students have the most up-to-date kinds of abilities, the design skills that will make them creative in your workplace. The scientific and sociological background will help them to understand the communities they are working in, the landscapes they are affecting by their decision-making, all of these things are a part of our curriculum and are giving new planners the kinds of skills and kinds of knowledge they need to be effective planners.
We need in the planning context visionaries as well as technocrats. We need young people to come in with their new ideas. If we didn't start out as idealistic young planners we'd soon lose faith in the profession that we have. It's that vision that we're helping to create better communities that gives us the reason to do what we do and young planners bring that with them in great measure. I think they bring that enthusiasm to the workplace that we can take advantage of and use their new ideas to generate debate.
In conclusion, I make the argument and presented enough facts to support that we are presenting well rounded graduates who have a lot of knowledge, a lot of ability, and a lot of enthusiasm. They don't have experience. Some of the skills they needs can only be developed through experience and some of the skills they need will have to be targeted to specific workplaces because we can't give people enough knowledge to be ready for everything. We only have a few years with these people. We do the best that we can in that period of time, but there's still a responsibility on the part of the employer to make sure that is taken further so that these people who come out of the planning schools with great knowledge about the region, great knowledge about their profession, can have an opportunity to continue that learning through the rest of their lives and make a continuing contribution to the workplace.
Questions:
1st person: I have a question regarding the NSCAD program. Twenty years ago, one of the strengths of the NSCAD program was that we could take courses at other universities. We could take a course at a law school, or engineering at St. Mary's, at the same time as you did your NSCAD program. Is that still possible?
Jill Grant: Yes, this is true of all the metro universities. You can take courses at any of the other schools as long as they can fit in your schedule.
1st person: I would suggest that's a real strength to that program and to some extent addresses Donna's concern in terms of things like courses in communication. When I graduated 20 years ago from NSCAD, it was a requirement of that program to be involved in practicum for a four month period, which she understood they don't do any more and was wondering why.
Jill Grant: Partly because of the many requirements to meet CIP accreditation, you have to have a lot of knowledge components so that was one of the reasons we ended up taking it out in order to fit in some other knowledge. Because our program at NSCAD was focused on environmental planning, we have a large environmental component in the curriculum and when we became recognized by CIP, we had to add to that the professional requirements for theory, economics, and other things. The program ended up getting quite cramped in terms of meeting all those requirements in the amount of time available.
1st person: The year I graduated I was one of the people who fought for CIP accreditation at NSCAD.
Jill Grant: The requirements for accreditation have changed over time and with each new iteration of the requirements for accreditation, the knowledge components become greater. We want these people to graduate with all kinds of skills and knowledge but trying to fit those into a curriculum where you only have a certain number of years to do that means you have to make choices. It is still possible for students to choose to do term employment. We found that most students were doing summer work terms.
Donna Davis-Lohnes: I think a real strength is the fact that we have four great institutions in the urban area that offer planning related courses at different levels. My impression is that while students can and do take courses, they are not actively encouraged and there is not really an opportunity for them to sit down with Jill or whomever to say this is where I'm going, this is my full gambit of choices, and how can I pick and choose. I took the time this week to pick-up academic calendars and thought I would want help. The other thing I saw was duplication. We have four institutions providing the same service. I know TUNS recently developed a course for GIS and St. Mary's University has a couple. There is a GIS focus at NSCAD. Is there not some way we could cooperate and rationalize skill resources?
2nd person: I know in Cape Breton we have public participation meetings and planning advisory committees and am not sure where HRM is relative to developing those type of programs, but possibly students could be encouraged to go out into the fields in conjunction with the various programs available. There is no better practical learning and practical experience in itself for a student than to go out and sit at the table with a planner.
Donna Davis-Lohnes: That's a terrific suggestion. We are approached by the schools to participate. We are interested in participating in that but I think this is an opportunity we have not taken advantage of. Is there an opportunity for the students to tag along with a planner working on a planning case and go from start to finish? I think that would be terrific. First hand knowledge and experience is really important.
Chris Reddy: Living and working outside Halifax and Dartmouth, I am appalled at the availability of continuing education. The only thing that seems to be available is a MBA. I can find no employer willing to help me in that regard. Are those courses on the Internet? What courses are there? Is there some way of being able to get academic accreditation.
Jill Grant: At NSCAD, we tried to offer a short course years ago between the profession and the schools. At the time the focus was on computer based issues. The problem was that we did not get enough enrollment. If we can find something there is enough interest in and find the communication, then there are the opportunities to do that, but it is hard to find a course that enough people will take in order to pay the instructor. We are starting to offer some courses by distance but those who graduated would already have them.
Patricia Manuel: I have a student for you (Donna Davis-Lohnes) for next semester. The most innovative people around in continuing education are the ones running the facilities in the institutions in the metro area and the region, and we have all kinds of ideas and are dealing with the problems of how to get people in programs and make them acceptable. We should also be talking to the continuing education director about ideas. I think it is really important for managers and directors to think about how they can help employees acquiring these extra skills and make the funding and time available to do that. The responsibility has to fall to you. New employees and employees in the middle level who want to advance need that support from their employers. It is money and time. When you ask people to come out for continuing education, you're asking instructors to come out in the evening. We work during the day. We are happy to accommodate the times required but people have to be given the time off work, the finances and the support to be able to do it.
5th speaker: Chris mentioned the educational opportunities are available here in Halifax. I find they are offered during the day time which does not work for me.
6th speaker: There's always a constant battle back and forth as to why we need a qualification. It is broader skills set. We argue the case in terms of what they will bring specific to the kinds of business they will do. If you don't produce people with those skills we are in trouble in terms of holding those positions for planners. In fact, we have lost some of those things to a set of broader qualifications. Couldn't we bring them in from a broader course? That is a practical thing the schools have to talk about. Largely related to land use, if we don't present that as a set of skills, which is likely to perform better over time, we simply lose that and then it creates practical problems for you.
Jill Grant: There is always a balance at the schools to make sure the skills are the most necessary ones in the workplace. It becomes increasingly difficult in the timeframe we have. What is happening in many of the disciplines like architecture is that they are adding an extra year to the programs just because of the expectations in the profession. People expect a whole bunch more skills and knowledge for the time you have available. If we continue to see these kinds of trends, that affects your ability to attract people into the programs. There are trade-offs to be made and I don't know where we are headed.
7th speaker: To me the most important thing to equip people with when they are being trained in university is what I would call the technical side of skills. How do you handle a public meeting? The process side of things is important but employers are more likely to train in the process side than on the technical side. Employers expect the graduates to have the technical training. Employers areprepared to generally say we can send you off for a report writing course and crowd control but don't expect to send them off for training they thought students were equipped with.
8th speaker: I represent the students of today from COGS. We have a lot of GIS experience. Ten of us there have some of the most advanced GIS experience. We have courses related to research and site engineering and I don't know if you're just talking about the technical students at NSCAD and TUNS, but I don't see many of them here today. If planners need these GIS skills, what about planning technicians? Will there be jobs for us?
Donna Davis-Lohnes: I think COGS is a great institution. Your training in GIS is really great. The difficulty is that they often end up as planning technicians. My comments were primarily related at the degree students. The planners know very little about GIS, let alone using it. I am not suggesting that planners turn around and use GIS like technicians but they need to have a fundamental understanding of it. In small municipalities you have to be a "jack of all trades". What I'm finding is that planners are starting at COGS and then going to St. Marys. For the planners coming through with this full gambit of skills, it takes 8-9 years but they are really marketable and promotable. The question in my mind is whether that's really necessary without taking that many years. Is there a different model to explore? Many planners start at COGS and have a good background in GIS.
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